22 Unique SEO Tips Backed by 22 Renowned SEO Experts

How great would it be if we could gather all the awesome SEO experts in just one room to talk about search engines ranks with a focus on the best SEO tips available out there? It would be glorious! Since we don’t have a room big enough to gather all the best experts in one place, we took advantage of the online “meetings” and gathered all the up to date SEO tips into an awesome expert roundup post. That is how we got the idea of interviewing 22 renowned SEO experts and how we found out 22 awesome and unique search engine optimization tips … the best of them.

We’ve got answers from some of the brightest minds about the most actionable tips from the digital marketing world. We’ve found interesting news, insights and really helpful tips and guidelines about mobile optimization, metrics, qualitative content marketing, testing, technical SEO and customer centric websites. These 22 tips are some of the best for small businesses or large enterprises. Make sure you get the best of them.

Grab a coffee, sit comfortably and start reading the next list with 22 unique SEO tips backed by 22 renowned SEO experts that will make your search traffic bloom.

1. Understand That SEO Is Not Just About Rankings

I’ve talked with many business owners that think ranking high in Google is all you need to be successful. The reality is that SEO is just one of many tactics to drive prospective customers to your website. Sure, ranking high in Google is great, but it’s also worthless if you don’t have a website that is set up properly to convert that traffic into leads and sales. Plus, you won’t rank high for long unless you have proper tracking in place and a process to monitor and analyze your SEO efforts. As you can see, SEO is not just about rankings; it’s also about website conversion rate optimization and website analytics and tracking. That’s important to understand before you start to invest in SEO.

2. Optimize Your Content for Your Customers and Not for the Search Engines

Producing content that’s irrelevant and insignificant to your audience’s wants and needs leads to only one thing – people stop taking you seriously. People click on your links in the SERPs but they do not interact with your website and leave quickly – wasted opportunity to turn visitors into customers.

Optimize your content for you customers and not for the search engines. What do I mean by that? It’s so easy to find some high volume keywords around your product and turn them into blog posts. I get it – everybody needs more visits.

Last but not least, take data from your internal Site Search. All you have to do now is to align a question with a keyword that would bring traffic to your website. To do that just drop a question in the Google keyword planner and you will be presented with an opportunity.

Note: Stay focused and only choose the keywords that answer your original buyer’s persona question.

I am sure you already know where I am going. You’ve got the question and you’ve got the targeted keyword. All you have to do now is give an answer in the form of a blog article or video.

We’ve started with the customer in mind and ended up with a content that’s relevant to YOUR audience and, at the same time, well optimized for the search engines.

3. Understand How Your Site Is Actually Performing Away From Vanity Metrics

My one tip would be always be auditing. Auditing is essential for SEO success. Understand how your site is actually performing away from vanity metrics.

Highly linkable content is content written on a broad enough topic that you can work it into guest posts and other link opportunities naturally, without the article having to be directly related to the content you’re linking to.

For example, I wrote a big piece on customer delight – a thorough guide on how to make your customers happy at every point in your relationship. I’ve been able to link to this piece within articles on topics ranging from marketing and sales to operations and employee management. Having a few of these kinds of pieces means you’ll never miss an opportunity to link to your content.

6. Do Not Underestimate How Important “Branding” Is to SEO

Do not underestimate how important “branding” is to SEO.

There’s no point being number 1 for “Taxi” if your customer types in “Uber”.

7. Build Your Website on a Solid Foundation of Data and Keyword Research

I’d recommend that you build your website’s information architecture, URL structure and plan the way content is organized on the domain, on a solid foundation of keyword research and detailed analysis of your search data.

Your goal should be to build a customer-centric destination that works 24/7 at attracting fresh business.

My company, Search Planet, specializes in E-commerce SEO. I often see even large e-commerce Web shops leak revenue and profit because they’ll mirror their own needs and organizational structure online, instead of focusing on their customers’ needs. So the best prospects don’t find them in search results. Or when they do, they won’t buy from them – but go to their competitors instead.

By transforming your online presence to be entirely customer-focused, you’ll cut through the clutter, dominate search engines, draw a flood of targeted traffic to your website, and make more sales.

8. Spend the Time and Money to Have Your Site Analyzed in Terms of Its Existing SEO

My one SEO tip would be to actually spend the time and money to have your site analyzed in terms of its existing SEO. So many times people aren’t willing to spend the money to have a professional dig in and figure out a good plan of action.

You could have all kinds of issues that you aren’t aware of and rather than just trying to throw links at the site or find someone to write better content for your home page, put some focus on doing a thorough SEO audit.

9. Make the Best Page on the Internet for Your Topic

The best tip is the hardest to follow: make the best page on the internet for your topic. Google famously has 2000+ Mathematics PhDs on staff. I assume they are smarter than me. And I want them on my team.

If you made the best page on the internet for your topic …there are 2000 Math PhD’s trying to HELP you;

If you didn’t make the best page on the internet for your topic …there are 2000 Math PhD’s trying to STOP you.

Of course, it’s not enough just to make a great page. But it’s step one. Combine this effort with a clear understanding of off-site SEO, links and basic understanding of how to increase your domain authority and everything is going to work out well for you.

10. When It Comes to Link Acquisition You Need to Be Looking for Trust

The landscape has changed so much, we’re seeing a lot more weight shifting towards user experience, and link building has become a game of trust.

My main tip would be around links, specifically link metrics. When it comes to link acquisition you need to be looking for trust, and you can only do this through a manual review.

SEOs need to forget about them; there isn’t a metric out there that gives a true reflection of the value of a link, we have come across so many links with good domain authority or domain trust that we would class as toxic websites. When it comes to link acquisition, you need to be looking for trust, and you can only do this through a manual review; is this website the kind of website Google would trust and want to pass value through, is it a trusted source of information? You should then focus on how your links appear on that site, links that look like ads, in the footer or sidebars are going to be less likely to pass value in the long term.

We’re seeing a huge increase in the influence site speed has on rankings. We have run a few tests now with clients and are seeing a direct and almost immediate correlation with speed improvements and an uplift in rankings. Make it a priority, work with the development team and ensure your website is as fast as possible.

11. Invest Time and Effort into Developing a Link Earning Strategy

Link building is not dead, it just as a new name – link earning. Invest the time and effort into developing and executing a link earning strategy for your business.

Do not take any shortcuts to buy or build low-quality links. While links are still a ranking factor, that is no longer their sole purpose. An effective link will provide the opportunity to improve three things; your traffic, your brand, and build trust. These are the links that should be your focal point. These types of links are found in building relationships with relevant websites and companies, creating valuable (not just quality) content, and a consistently having a giving mentality. Though it takes times, the reward will be worth it.

12. If Everyone Else Is Zigging, Then Zagging Is a Strategic Opportunity

If you just want one SEO tip, then let me share the insight that led me to co-found SEO-PR back in 2003. Hundreds of SEOs optimize web pages hoping that they will get a high ranking in Google search results. And many of them do a great job. But only a small handful optimize news stories, blog posts, or press releases hoping that they will get a high ranking in Google News search results.

The links in press releases are no-follow, so there is no “link juice” in them. But, they can still drive visitors to a page with more information – if it’s relevant and important. We used unique tracking links in four press releases for Southwest Airlines to generate $2.5 million in ticket sales.

Now, the Google News algorithm is similar but different than the Google algorithm. Why? Because inbound links aren’t as strong a signal of the importance of a story. This puts a premium on relevance. But, the big mistake that many SEOs make is assuming that the popularity of keywords used on Google is the same on Google News. They often aren’t. You can see this for yourself by using the Google Trends Explore tool. The default result for any keyword will be web search interest. But you can use the drop down menu to see news search interest. And the trends are often different.

In addition, Google says that 16% of searches that it sees every day are new. Well, ask yourself: “Where do baby search terms come from?” And you’ll discover that the stork doesn’t bring them. They are generated by the “news.” So, these are search terms that your competitors haven’t been optimizing their web pages to get high rankings for 15 years. So, you have a better shot of getting your news stories or blog posts (if you’re a news source) and even your press releases to get high rankings for than you would for yet another web page.

Source: Source: lamenteesmaravillosa.com

Now, admittedly, your ranking in Google News may only last a day or two. But, for near term news and events, this is the opportunity to drive traffic to a relevant landing page on your website. Now, the links in press releases are no-follow, so there is no “link juice” in them. But, they can still drive visitors to a page with more information — if it’s relevant and important. We used unique tracking links in four press releases for Southwest Airlines to generate $2.5 million in ticket sales. And when the CFO asked how we knew that they came from the press releases, we showed him that the tracking parameters on the links weren’t used by any other element of the company’s marketing. And when he suggested that we were merely harvesting interest that had been generated by the company’s excellent TV advertising, we showed him that the releases were for new service to cities where Southwest Airlines had never run an ad. He asked what else we knew. Well, we’d analyzed the database of people who had purchased tickets and found that two-thirds had never flown Southwest Airlines before and that they were generally purchasing round-trip tickets for two people.

Now, here’s the punch line: Part of why we got such strong response was the use of the term “low airfare” in the headline and lead paragraph of the press release. But the other part was the actual price of a one-way ticket in the headline — which actually was a “low airfare.” So, it isn’t just about putting a keyword in the headline and lead paragraph.

13. Invest More in Content

Invest more in content. This is without a doubt the thing that people underinvest in the most, yet, doing so almost always brings great yields, both in terms of conversion and SEO.

Here at Stone Temple, we have built up numerous case studies of work we’ve done where we have more than doubled traffic to the pages we work on, simply by making improvements to the content on those pages.

14. Run Your Own SEO Tests Across Different Search Categories

Don’t believe everything you read and watch on the internet about SEO. Most of the best SEO’s I know don’t even have a Twitter account. Run your own SEO tests across different search categories.

15. Perform an In-Depth SEO SWOT Analysis

It is always tough to provide a generic yet actionable SEO tip that folks have not seen a million times before. What is right for a local business is not right for a national business. What works for a B2B company won’t work for a B2C eCommerce store.

My best SEO tip is to do an SEO SWOT analysis. What are your SEO Strengths? What are your SEO Weaknesses? What are your SEO Opportunities? What are your SEO Threats?

If you create a basic SWOT grid and start to detail your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you can start to get a better idea what kind of SEO you need. This is exactly how we work at Bowler Hat and even our SEO service page details how you need to identify what kind of SEO is right for you.

As an example. If a weakness was domain authority, then you can focus on that area. Often businesses will have competence in one area or another. They may be great on page SEO but lack keyword research skills. You may have all the content you need but lack authority. It is very easy to focus on your strengths – this approach forces you to confront your weaknesses.

So my tip – identify your current situation and focus on your weaknesses.

16. Understand What Your Targeted Audience Might Be Looking For

A lesson I learned from one of the highest level corporate law judges in Delaware was to “be responsive” – Make it as easy as possible for people to answer you and to say yes to something that you are asking. This lesson translates well into SEO also.

Make sure you understand what your targeted audience might be looking for when they might search for a site that you are optimizing.

What words they might use when they search for it, how they might construct their query and what words they will expect to see on your pages. Also what questions they might have about the goods or services offered on that website; and the answers to those questions, so that you can provide answers, and begin the journey towards having them become customers of your site.

Being responsive means building a website for your audience that makes it easy for them to learn about what you are offering, and easy for them to purchase from you. Being successful at SEO means building websites for your client’s audience.

17. Test Longer Strategies over Tactics and Measure Each Step of the Way

If I were pressed to give just one SEO tip, it’s to not expect a quick return today (generally speaking).

Is it possible that a single implementation could make a big difference? Yes. Is it likely? Not really. If you’re investing in SEO, you’re accepting a long game.

Try testing longer strategies over tactics, and measure each step of the way.

Google has made huge changes that altered the way SEOs do their work. Many of the historic, quick-hitting tactics we wrote into our playbooks have either been devalued by Google or have little weight today. SEO isn’t for the weak-hearted – expect that it could take a while to move into a position that starts to hit your goals. It takes diligence, trial and error, and patience.

Google wants to rank the sites that earn their users’ satisfaction. Google isn’t as easily influenced, thanks to new search models and AI that are designed to truly understand the value of a page the way a user would.

18. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly

There are many things you can do to your website to improve SEO, but I would say right now that you should focus on making sure your site is mobile-friendly.

19. Create Your Own Websites and Experiment Things Risk-Free

When I started out in the industry I was obsessed with consuming every SEO article that was published, but ultimately things really took off when I started launching websites. None of them are particularly successful, but they allowed me to try things risk-free without jeopardizing a client’s campaign. I was able to freely dive into onsite SEO, and I also dabbled in the ‘dark arts’ of link building which of course led to one of my sites being penalized..all fun and games!

In order to truly understand how a website works I think it’s important to have some hands on experience, and getting that is easier than you might think. WordPress websites are simple to set up, and building up a bit of traffic can also allow you to experiment with advertising, log file analysis and more!

20. Focus on Content Quality

The single biggest tip I can give SEOs for 2017 is focusing on content quality. Over the last year, I have extensively been running experiments on how much the swing of search results has moved to the quality of the content.

It seems that the Google algo is getting better and better at pulling out content and really starting to understand how that content answers a query.

Traditionally we used to talk about “content” and used to hammer in content in areas where really there was no structure, for example on product category landing pages in eCommerce websites. That used to be good enough to dominate the short, mid and long tail of queries as long as you had a decent volume of links.

My experiments have shown that although you may be able to dominate these queries by link volume alone, you can actually rank better with fewer links if your content quality is decent. And quality means ease of reading, supplying specific answers, breaking it down into digestible pieces, and even semantically layering it. Some of my small affiliate sites are dominating spaces where traditionally massive e-commerce sites used to occupy.

21. Find a Way to Create Attention

Attention creates awareness, which in turn creates (brand) traffic and links, which will improve your SEO. You need to find a way to create attention (to your product/service/brand/company/website).

22. Hone Your Technical SEO Skills as Much as Possible

While SEO is a relatively broad discipline, the technical aspects of it are relatively opaque to many, and there is no shortcut for. On top of that, it is a skill that will likely always be in demand.

Conclusion

On the long run, search engine optimization will always work, it is just metamorphosed into different forms and approaches. The SEO experts involved in this article said that every business owner should focus on the customer, valuable (not just quality or unique ) content, testing, in-depth analysis, link earning, mobile responsiveness, creative technical SEO while keeping an eye on the ranking signals and the quality backlinks. There are a lot of Youtube videos or “ultimate guides” to improve your SEO. The truth is that some grass-root pieces of advice directly from the professionals in the field are always the SEO tactics you can learn from.

The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results. Because nobody might go to the second page in SERP when they look for something. That’s why, from time to time, you need take into account these kind of actionable SEO tips (directly from SEO experts) and rank higher in Google. Lots of people want to receive organic traffic, write relevant fresh content, have fast loading speed, earn quality links, have authority sites and no Google penalties. Having an SEO strategy, get registered with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and other digital marketing tools might help you outrank your competitors and become number one. But it depends on you to do the things right; if you follow these SEO techniques backed up by experts you might have bigger chances of success.

Make sure you pay attention to these more advanced SEO tactics but don’t forget about the basic SEO tips for your website, such as an internal link strategy, increasing social shares for brand awareness, building relevant links for your website optimizing anchor text, crawling your site to fix broken links, get keyword ideas, create valuable and relevant content on your site, easy to read blogs with popular content, onpage SEO optimization for long tail keywords, image alt text, compelling meta descriptions and unique titles and descriptions. Also bear in mind to integrate social media into the whole SEO strategy, because it is an important piece of the pie. This blog post is a collection of actionable SEO tips for beginners but also for professionals and we hope you will take full advantage of them.

Andreea is an enthusiastic Copywriter @ cognitiveSEO who has a love for creativity and writing. When she is not watching for the 10th time the TV series Friends, she enjoys a good book and a glass of rose wine. She likes to see life from different angles (and cities).
Motto: Eat, think and travel often.

Most of CEOs always mixed SEO with sales. But SEO has nothing to do with sales.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s have nothing to do with generating leads or increase sales. Indeed, as a Marketer, we can’t be happy by increasing rank, traffic or promoting the brand. We also need to generate leads for our sales team. But it’s have nothing to do with SEO itself.

What exactly Google want to provide when we search for?
Showing most informative & correct information to the user. Then user decides what to click. But google also very concern about the user experience after the click. Are they safe (Google already said https must be everywhere & still 90% SEOs scare to move HTTPS) or they receive the best answer of their questions?

So as an SEOs you should be always focused on providing best user experience after landing your page from the SERPs. And as a Digital Marketers, you can focus on how to convert them into lead or sales.

Hi Andreea, Good morning from New York. Indeed to Marketers, everything is related to sales. Like the business card or Birthday wishing email or replying “Thank you” to any social media post.

And why would CEO’s invest money in long term SEO plan if they can’t expect any return.

So why I said Most of CEOs always mixed SEOs with sales cause:

When they design a website they hired graphics designer & web developer & most of Graphics designer have no idea what kind of layout can improve conversation rates or most of the times the person who approved layout. But SEOs (Digital Marketers) does. I experienced over the decade in New York City 95% of the small business owner think about SEO after creating the website. And they are not ready to change their website to improve conversation rates.

I also experience conversations rates improve dramatically when you change user experience after land on your page.

If you google for “must have the skill for SEOs” we can find they must need to be analytical, technical etc. But as a Digital marketer, you must need to have knowledge of how to drive traffic and convert them into leads or sales.

Most of the samll company hire SEOs and they even don’t understand the importance of Digital marketing background.

SEOs knows how to rank higher so the user can find them in SERPs.

Digital marketers know how to increase CTR, improve user experience in landing page and encourage them to convert into leads. Now, for example, SaaS based product like cognitiveSEO if you don’t use any marketing automation platform to engaged with lead your chances are very low to convert lead into sales.

User signup for the trail, you schedule an introduction call then lead does not continue your services after the trial period. SEOs have nothing to do with this.

But digital marketers must need to have some sort of automation platform to stay connected with lead and educate them why you need us.

As you can see now SEOs serve the purpose by sending traffic from SERPs and digital marketer needs to step up to convert them into sales. As a CEO if you don’t see SEO is driving traffic but don’t increase your sell, please don’t blame your SEOs, blame your digital marketer.

Summarizing all that experts have said about SEO is a huge job and it well done by Andreea Sauciuc. I’ve never gone through an article on search marketing like this. I think Andreea also took the pain of reading all the expert thoughts. A great pick by a great copy writer.

As a reader, I can choose the thoughts I like most. For instance take mobile friendly advice. Now the virtual world is moving towards mobile first from desktop search and also Google considers mobile-friendly as a factor in ranking. I wanted Andreea to write some more words on responsive design and mobile optimized sites.

Thanks Andreea, I enjoyed your post very much and found some new insights from the experts! I agree with Mark 100%, For me SEO is all about testing, and improving after analyzing the data. I believe that experience is the best teacher and that knowledge comes from experimenting with different areas of SEO. Before doing any SEO, I focus on keyword research, as the first step because it determines all my future SEO success.

Great Post, you had a lot of great information condensed into one very easy to read and understand blog. I like that the answers weren’t dragged on but rather highlighted exactly what should be taken into consideration. Also a lot of the things mentioned are some of the most common things people over look or take for granted. Great post and I’ll definitely be back for more!

I’m a newbie and your recommend is good for me. But I think content also is king & backlink is queen. All out of these just be tactics that help your site better. Anw, I will follow your suggest and track the changes.
Thank you so much.

this is really nice article and I think there is also lots of work behind it 🙂 So thank you for that and keep doing great job.

I was also thinking what would my answer to this question be. As I am focusing mostly on content marketing and linkbuilding, lots of people are asking me about metrics which I use for evaluating linkbuilding activities.

And that would be my advice “Don’t focus on metrics. Just go with it”. This applies to focusing on ranking or metrics like domain authority. Yes, it is important to know and compare, but don’t focus on it. Just be natural when creating content and building relationships.

Hello, Andreea Sauciuc,
I salute you for sharing a excellent post! These are so much important for Search Engine Optimization. I have no idea about one thing like, If I put a link on comment section this is hard my website?

Thank you for your appreciation.
Regarding your question, if the link is relevant to the discussion and can complement the article, it might not hurt your website. But if you drop a link for the sole purpose to have another link, then most probably it will hurt your website.